If I wasn't an artist....

 Holy heat, Batman!  It's hotter than "H . E. double hockey sticks" today, and not just hot, but muggy as all get out!  Heat, I can handle, but when the humidex creeps closer to 40 degrees than 30.... I have a problem!  I probably shouldn't complain, especially considering I complained pretty much consistently about the cold this winter as well as this "spring" (spring being in quotes because we never had one, we had winter, more winter, winter might be almost over, winter again, then apparently summer; there was no spring that I saw, unless you count that one day in April).

​So here I sit, the studio is hot, so even though my brain is swimming with ideas, I just can't bring myself to paint.  So here I sit, having a cold bevvy and writing.  Even Baby the Wonder Kitty is hiding from the heat, she's spent most of the day sleeping under my bed, coming out briefly to eat, drink and attack me.

​While I'm here baking like a giant turkey, I got thinking.  I was asked a while back what I would have done with my life it I hadn't become an artist.  I think I may have promised to address the question in a blog post in the near future, so, as a man of my word, I'm doing just that.  What would Carl do if he didn't paint?  Quite a question given the fact that I didn't really choose art.  Artistic expression, much like what I'd imagine a call to ministry or to teach, is just that, a calling, almost a compulsion.  It's something that's so "in your blood" that you can't not do it.  I've always been artistic in some way or another, drawing or painting.  Mind you, that doesn't answer the question.  I spent many years walking around this world before I became a professional artist, and in that time, I did a lot of field research on the question of what I would be.  I tried every job known to man.  I've discussed it before, but I tried everything from the Army to construction labourer and from waiter to porter.  If it didn't require a university degree or some sort of certification, I tried it, and hated it!

​I tried to "straighten up and fly right".  I tried to fit into the work a day mold.  Turns out it just didn't work for me; I just could never find any satisfaction in working for others.  I wanted to call the shots, and I wanted to come and go and do as I saw fit.  So as I sit here, letting the cool air of my apartment run over me, I began thinking about it and the answer, I think is this.  If I weren't an artist, I'd have become a writer.  There's a fun Carl Fact, I used to write quite a bit when I was younger, poetry and such, and I enjoyed it quite a bit.  And from what I'm told, I wasn't half bad.  So there you go, I'd have been a writer, if I wasn't an artist, still strange, still outside the box and still doing my own thing because my own thing has always ever been the only thing I could do.

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